Grindr founder Joel Simkhai explains why he rejected institutional venture capital offers around 2013 despite outside investor interest.
Insight
Simkhai: Users will pay for dating apps because matchmaking was always paid
“I remember people always telling me, you know, hey, Joel nobody pays for apps. Apps are all free. And no one's gonna ever pay for an app, and I said, I'm actually not an app. I'm a, essentially, a dating business, and people have been paying for dating for cen…”
Assertion Supported
Simkhai: Egyptian authorities actively use Grindr to track and arrest gay men
“It's not alleged. It happens.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Simkhai: Grindr's customer acquisition cost was essentially zero
“Our marketing spend was essentially zero, so our cost to acquire new users was essentially zero. I mean, that's what allowed us to grow. You know, if I had to spend money acquiring users, we would not have been able to achieve what we achieved.”
Insight
Simkhai: Local network density is the core moat for location-based apps
“And, you know, for a location-based service, when you're meeting people, it's really, you know, all about, you want people nearby. And if someone's not nearby, that's not a great experience. And so we had the, you know, first mover's advantage. We had the netw…”
Insight
Simkhai: Startup valuations and headcount are vanity metrics
“And I think one of the ways that founders get caught up in validation is with Valuations.
Valuations, headcount.
And to me, those were vanity metrics.
Those were not metrics that were important.
The only metric that was really important to me was my daily acti…”
Insight
Simkhai: Blendr failed because product architecture misunderstood women's needs
“Our failure was in the architecture of what we did. And so, you know, if there was a woman, she would get hundreds and hundreds of messages. We also allowed people to exchange photos, and so women would get unsolicited nudes. That, you know, that was a problem…”